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In 1920, Charles "Barley" Garland, the 21-year-old son of a Wall Street broker, informed the executor of his father's estate that he would refuse to accept a $1 Million inheritance from the estate of his deceased father. Garland explained to a reporter at the time that he would not accept money from "a system which starves thousands while hundreds are stuffed" and which "leaves a sick woman helpless and offers its services to a healthy man."[1] Garland indicated to this reporter that he was not refusing to accept these funds because of socialist beliefs, but rather because as part of his study of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the works of Leo Tolstoy and H.G. Wells, he had come to the earnest belief that the money "is not mine."[1]

Hearing of the young man's decision to refuse his inheritance and his rationale, the socialist author Upton Sinclair urged Garland to accept the money not for his personal gain, but rather to put it to a higher use. Sinclair suggested making $100,000 donations to a set of specific organizations seeking to change the economic and social system of which Garland disapproved. These organizations favored by Sinclair included The Liberator magazine, the socialist daily newspaper The New York Call, the communist daily newspaper The Daily Worker, the Federated Press news service, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Union Against Militarism, and the magazine edited by 1916 Socialist Party Presidential candidate Allan L. Benson, Reconstruction.[2] While Garland did not immediately take action upon this suggestion, it seems as though the idea of accepting the inheritance in the name of establishing a radical philanthropic organization was planted in his head at this time.

In 1921, Garland was approached by Roger Baldwin, head of the American Civil Liberties Union, probably through ACLU attorney Walter Nelles, a law partner of Swinburne Hale, who had recently married Garland's widowed mother.[3] Baldwin convinced Garland to accept his father's inheritance and to establish with it a "national trust fund" which would aid efforts to expand "individual liberty and the power of voluntary associations."[4]

While the board of directors in charge of distributing grants from the Garland Fund exhibited great cooperation during its initial phase, gradually the fratricidal hostility which characterized American radical politics in the 1920s made its way into the board's discussions. The board seemed to split between a Communist left and Socialist right wings, with a small number of centrists tipping the balance.[6]

On June 18, 1941, the board of directors of the American Fund for Public Service announced that it had voted to terminate the fund, returning its "few remaining assets" to Charles Garland. Garland was assigned $24,626.18 in outstanding loans, as well as the organization's final cash balance of $1,619.13.[8] Over the course of its 19-year existence, the Garland fund had contributed nearly $2 Million to almost 100 enterprises.[8]